Chapter XXXV

Overcome by the emotion of such recollections, the Countess Wanda, after a brief silence, resumed her story.

"We passed several days in the cavern, and my son recovered strength and activity with wonderful rapidity. Marcus, surprised at discovering the trace of no organic injury, or great change in the vital system, was alarmed at his profound silence and his apparent or real indifference to our transports. Albert had completely lost his memory. Wrapped in deep study, he in vain made silent efforts to understand what was passing around him. I was not so impatient as Marcus to see him regain the poignant recollection of his love, for I knew well that sorrow was the only cause of his disease, and of the catastrophe which had resulted from it. Marcus himself said that the effacing of the past alone would be the means of his regaining strength. His body recovered quickly at the expense of his mind, which was giving way rapidly beneath the melancholy effort of his thoughts.

"'He lives, and certainly will live,' said he; 'but will not his mind be obscured? Let us leave this cavern as soon as possible; air, sunlight, and exercise will doubtless awaken him from his mental slumber. Let us, above all things, abandon the false and impassive life which has killed him: let us leave this family and its society, which crushes his natural impulses. We will take him among persons who will sympathise with him, and in company with them his soul will recover its vigor.'

"Could I hesitate? Wandering leisurely towards evening around the Schreckenstein, where I pretended to ask charity, I learned that Count Christian had relapsed into a kind of dotage. He had not known of his son's return, and the prospect of his father's death would certainly have killed Albert. Was it, then, necessary to restore him to his old aunt, to the insane chaplain and brutal uncle, who had made his life and his mental death so painful and sad?

"'Let us fly with him,' said I to Marcus. 'Let him not witness his father's agony, nor that terrible spectacle of Catholic idolatry which ever surrounds the bed of death. My heart breaks when I think that my husband--who did not understand me, but whose simple virtues I venerate, and whom I have as religiously respected since I left him as I did before--will pass away without exchanging a mutual pardon. Since that must be the case--since the reappearance of myself and my child would be either useless or injurious to him, let us go. Do not let us restore to that sepulchral palace what we have wrested from death, and to whom hope and life now unfold a magnificent career. Ah! let us implicitly obey the impulse which brought us hither. Let us rescue Albert from the prison-house of false duties, created by rank and riches. Those duties to him will always be crimes; and if he persists in discharging them, for the purpose of gratifying the relations whom death and age rapidly claim, he will himself probably be the first to die. I know what I suffered from the slavery of thought, in that mortal and incessant contradiction between the soul and positive life--between principles, instincts, and compulsory habits. I see he has travelled the same path, and imbibed the same poisons. Let us take him away then, and if he choose to contradict us at some future day, can he not do so? If his father's life be prolonged, and if his mental health permit, will it not always be possible for him to return and console the declining years of Count Christian by his presence and his love?'

"'That will be difficult,' said Marcus. 'I see in the future terrible obstacles, if Albert should wish to annul his divorce from society, the world, and his family.'

"'Why should Albert do so? His family will perhaps become extinct, before he regains the use of his memory: and whatever name, honors, or wealth he may attain in the world, I know what he will think as soon as he returns to his senses. Heaven grant that day may borne soon. Our most important task is to place him in such a position that his cure may be possible.'

"We left the cavern by night, as soon as Albert was able to sustain himself. At a short distance from the castle we placed him on horseback, and reached the frontier, which is at this place very near, as you know, and where he found more suitable means of transportation. The numerous affiliations of our order with the masonic fraternity procured for us the means of travelling all through Germany, without being recognised or subjected to the scrutiny of the police. Bohemia, in consequence of the recent events at Prague, was the only country where we were in danger. There the surveillance of the Austrian authorities was very rigid."

"And what became of Zdenko?" asked the young Countess of Rudolstadt.

"Zdenko nearly ruined us by his obstinate refusal to permit us to go, or, at least, to part with Albert, whom he would not suffer to leave him, and would not follow. He persisted in thinking Albert could live nowhere but in the sad Schreckenstein. 'Nowhere else,' said he, 'is my Podiebrad calm. In other places they torment, and will not let him sleep. They seek to make him deny our fathers at Mount Tabor, and induce him to lead a base and disgraceful life. This exasperates him. Leave him here; I will take good care of him, as I have often done. I will not disturb his meditations, and when he wishes to be silent I will walk without making any noise, and keep Cynabre's muzzle within my hands for two whole hours, to keep him from annoying Podiebrad by licking his fingers. When he is weary I will sing him the songs he loves, for he loves my verses, and is the only person who can understand them. Leave him here. I know what suits him better than you, and when you see him again, he will be playing the violin, or planting the cypress branches, which I will cut in the forest, around the grave of his beloved mother. I will feed him well; I know all the cabins, and no one ever refuses bread, milk, or fruits to good old Zdenko. The poor peasants of the Boehmer-wald, though they do not know it, have long fed their noble master, the rich Podiebrad. Albert does not like feasts, where people eat flesh, but prefers a life of innocence and simplicity. He does not wish to see the sun, but prefers the moonbeams, glancing through the woods in savage places where our good friends, the Zingari, camp at night. They are the children of the Lord, and know neither laws nor riches.'

"I listened to Zdenko with attention, because his innocent words revealed to me the details of the life Albert led with him during his frequent absences in the cavern. 'Do not fear,' said he, 'that I shall ever reveal to his enemies the secret of his abode. They are so false and foolish, that they now say, "our child is dead, our friend is dead, and our master is dead." They would not believe he was alive, even if they were to see him. Besides, do I not reply when, they ask me if I have seen Count Albert, "he is certainly dead." As I laughed when I said this, they thought me mad. I spoke thus to mock them, because they think, or seem to think him dead. When the people of the castle pretend to follow, do I not make a thousand windings to throw them out? All the devices of the hare and partridge are known to me. I know, like them, how to hide in a furrow, to disappear under the brush, to make a false track, to jump over a torrent, to hide myself while they pass by, and, like a will-o'-wisp, to lead them astray in the ponds and morasses. They call me Zdenko the _fool._ I am more knave, though, than any of them. There was never but one girl, a good, sweet girl, who could get the better of Zdenko. She knew the magic words to soothe his wrath. She had talismans to overcome all perils and dangers. Her name was Consuelo.'

"When Zdenko pronounced your name, Albert shuddered lightly, and looked away. He immediately, however, let his head fall on his breast, and his memory was not aroused.

"I tried in vain to soothe this devoted and blind guardian by promising to restore Albert to Schreckenstein, if he would accompany him to the place whither we proposed to take him. I did not succeed however; and when at last, half by persuasion and half by force, we induced him to suffer my son to leave the cavern, he followed us with tears in his eyes, and singing sadly, as far as the mines of Cuttemberg. When he reached this celebrated spot, where Ziska won his great victory over Sigismund, Zdenko recognised the rocks which marked the frontier, for no one had explored all the paths of the country more closely than he had done in his vagabond career. There he paused and said, stamping on the ground, 'Zdenko will never leave the country where his father's bones rest. Not long ago, I was exiled and banished by my Podiebrad, for having menaced the girl he loved, and I passed weeks and months on a foreign soil. I returned afterwards to my dear forests to see Albert sleep, for a voice in a dream whispered to me that his anger had passed. Now, when he does not curse me, you steal him from me. If you do so to take him to Consuelo, I consent. As for leaving my country now, and speaking the tongue of my enemies again, as for giving them my hand, and leaving Schreckenstein deserted and abandoned, I will not. This is too much. The voices, too, in my dreams have forbid this. Zdenko must live and die in the land of the Sclaves. He must live and die singing Sclavic glory and misfortune in the language of his fathers. Adieu! and go. Had not Albert forbade me to shed human blood, you would not thus take him from me. He would curse me, though, if I lifted my hand on you, and I would rather never see than offend him. Do you hear, oh! Podiebrad,' said he, kissing my son's hand, while the latter looked at and heard but did not understand him. 'I obey you and go. When you return you will find the fire kindled, your books in order, your bed made with new leaves, and your mother's tomb strewed with evergreen leaves. If it be in the season of flowers, there will be flowers on the bones of our martyrs near the spring. Adieu, Cynabre.' As he spoke thus with a broken voice, Zdenko rushed over the rocky ledge which inclined towards Bohemia, and disappeared like a stag at dawn.

"I will not describe, dear Consuelo, our anxiety during the first weeks Albert passed with us. Hidden in the house you now inhabit, he returned gradually to the kind of life we sought to awake in him with care and precaution. The first word he spoke was called forth by musical emotion. Marcus understood that Albert's life was knit to his love of you, and resolved not to awaken the memory of that love until he should be fit to inspire in return the same passion. He then inquired minutely after you, and in a short time ascertained the least details of your past and present life. Thanks to the wise organization of our order, and the relations established with other secret societies, a number of neophytes and adepts, whose functions consist in the scrupulous examination of persons and things that interest us, nothing can escape our investigations. The world has no secrets for us. We know how to penetrate the arcana of politics and the intrigues of courts. Your pure life, your blameless character, were not difficult to be seen. The Baron Von Trenck, as soon as he saw that the man you had loved was his friend Albert, spoke kindly of you. The Count of Saint Germain, one of those men who apparently are absent-minded as possible, yet who in fact is most discriminating, this strange visionary, this superior being, who seems to live only in the past, while nothing that is present escapes him, furnished us with the most complete information in relation to you. This was of such a character that henceforth I looked on you as my own child.

"When we were sufficiently well informed to act with certainty we sent for skillful musicians who came beneath the window where we now sit. Albert was where you are, and leaned against the curtain watching the sunset. Marcus held one of his hands and I the other. Amid a symphony composed expressly for the four instruments, in which we had inserted several of the Bohemian airs Albert sings with such religion and enthusiasm, we made them play the hymn to the Virgin with which you once so delighted him--

Consuelo de mi alma.

"At that moment, Albert, who hitherto had exhibited a faint emotion at our old Bohemian songs, threw himself in my arms, and shedding tears, said--'My mother!'

"Marcus put an end to the music, being satisfied with the effect he had produced. He did not wish to push the first experiment too far. Albert had seen and recognised me, and had found power to love. A long time yet passed before his mind recovered its freedom. He had however, no access of fever. When his mental powers were overtasked, he relapsed into melancholy silence. His face, though, insensibly assumed a less sad expression, and by degrees we combatted this taciturn disposition. We were at last delighted to see this demand for intellectual repose disappear, and he continued to think, except at his regular hours for sleep, when he was quiet as other men are. Albert regained a consciousness of life and love for you and me, for charity and enthusiasm towards his fellows, and for virtue, faith and the duty of winning its triumphs. He continued to love you without bitterness and without regret for all that he had suffered. Notwithstanding, however, his efforts to reassure us, and to exhibit his courage and self-denial, we saw that his passion had lost nothing of its intensity. He had merely acquired more moral power and strength to bear it. We did not seek to oppose him. Far otherwise. Marcus and I strove to endow him with hope, and we resolved to inform you of the existence of him for whom you were mourning, if not in your dress, in your heart. Albert, with generous resignation, forbade us to do so, refraining from all disposition to make a sacrifice of your happiness to your sense of duty.

"His health seemed completely restored, and others than I aided him to combat his unfortunate passion. Marcus and some of the chiefs of our order initiated him in the mysteries of our enterprise. He experienced a serious and melancholy joy in those daring hopes, and, above all, in the long philosophical discussions, in which, if he did not meet with entire similarity of opinions between him and his noble friends, he at least felt himself in contact with every profound and ardent idea of truth. This aspiration towards the ideal, long repressed and restrained by the narrow terrors of his family, had, at last, free room to expand, and this expansion, seconded by noble sympathies, excited even by frank and genial contradiction, was the vital air in which he could breathe and act, though a victim to secret suffering. The mind of Albert is essentially metaphysical: nothing smiles on him in the frivolous life where egotism seeks its food. He is born for the contemplation of high truths and the exercise of the most austere virtues. At the same time, by a perfection of moral beauty which is rare among men, he is gifted with a soul essentially tender and affectionate. Charity is not enough, he must love; and this passion extends to all, though he feels the necessity of concentrating it on some individuals. In devotion he is a fanatic, yet his virtue is not savage. Love intoxicates, friendship sways him, and his life is a fruitful and inexhaustible field, divided between the abstract being he reveres passionately, under the name of humanity, and the persons he loves. In fine, his sublime heart is a hearth of love; all noble passions exist there without rivalry, and if God could be represented under a finite and perishable form, I would dare assert that the soul of my son is an image of that universal soul we call the divinity.

"On that account, a weak human being, infinite in its inspiration limited and without resources, he had been unable to live with his parents. Had he not loved them ardently, he would have been able to live apart from them, healthy and calm, differing from them, but indulging their harmless blindness. This would, however, have required a certain coldness, of which he was incapable as I. He could not live isolated in his mind and heart. He had besought their aid, and appealed in despair for a community of ideas between him and the beings who were so dear to him. Therefore was it that, shut up in the iron wall of their Catholic obstinacy, their social prejudices and their hatred to a religion of equality, he had broken to pieces as he sighed on their bosoms; he had dried up like a plant without dew, calling on heaven for rain to endow him with an existence like those he loved. Weary of suffering alone, loving alone, weeping and praying alone, he thought he regained life in you; and when you participated in his ideas, he was calm and reasonable. Yet you did not reciprocate his sentiments, and your separation could not but plunge him into an isolation both deeper and more insurmountable. His faith was perpetually denied and contradicted, and became a torture too great for human power. Vertigo took possession of him: unable to mingle the sublime essence of his own soul in others like it, he died.

"So soon as he found hearts capable of comprehending and seconding him, we were amazed at his moderation in discussion, his tolerance, confidence, and modesty. We had apprehended, from the past, that he would be stern, self-willed, and exhibit the strong manner of talking, which, though proper enough in a mind convinced and enthusiastic, would be dangerous to his progress and detrimental to such an enterprise as ours. He surprised us by his candor, and charmed us by his behavior. He who made us better by speaking and talking to us, persuaded himself that he received what he really gave us. He soon became the object of boundless veneration, and you must not be surprised that so many persons toiled for your rescue, for his happiness had become the common object of all who had approached him, though merely for an instant."